8 years ago
All posts by Jesse Knight
“Stinking Heaven”
A sober-living safe house is neither safe nor sober in Stinking Heaven, the fifth feature (and fourth in 3 years) from director Nathan Silver. The New York-based filmmaker’s wonderfully caustic sense of humor and fetish for familial and social dysfunction are ...
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“Horns”
In a time when cinema has become almost exclusively a cynical and pat medium, in which marketability foregoes the quality of the product being sold, originality has become a mythic, widely discarded possibility. The concept that every story has already been to...
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The Space Between Two People: An Interview with John Gallagher Jr.
After leaving a substantial mark on the theater scene with acclaimed performances in blockbuster Broadway musicals like Spring Awakening (for which he won a Tony Award in 2007) and American Idiot, John Gallagher Jr. has, in the past couple years, made inroads ...
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“White Bird in a Blizzard”
A good mystery is never about the reveal. The reveal is a backdrop, or a catalyst for characters to be jerked out of complacency and into orbit. Circumstances of chaos and desperation deliver them from one point to another, always the same shore, regardless of...
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“Honeymoon” A Phony, Unrelentingly Silly Horror-Suspense Yarn
Honeymoon — or the more aptly titled, I’m Fine, Really —is an unrelentingly dough-headed horror-suspense yarn dressed up in the saggy skin of a relationship parable. It might help if the couple in the spotlight were one worth investing in, one that reflected a...
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“Wetlands” A Spectacularly Septic Laugh- and Cringefest
Finally a film that addresses the age-old, burning, itching question: Can romance exist in the wake of an anal fissure? Opening in U.S. cities this month like a fresh, gaping wound is Wetlands, a spectacularly septic coming-of-age story from Germany that revel...
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Love and Down’s Syndrome Battle In “Yo, también”
This Spanish coming-of-age romance about a man with Down's syndrome approaches its subject with respectful, nuanced grace.
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“Magic in the Moonlight” An Unabashedly Romantic and Optimistic Entry in Woody Allen’s Career
What a period of refinement this is for Woody Allen. With last year’s Blue Jasmine, 2011’s Midnight in Paris, and now Magic in the Moonlight, the storied writer-director has ushered in his most confident work in years, maybe decades, as he maintains his one-fi...
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“Alive Inside” Beautifully Underscores The Power of Music
No film I’ve seen better underlines the transcendental power and mysticism that music has over human emotions than Alive Inside, filmmaker Michael Rossato-Bennett’s devoutly moving and often quite beautiful-looking documentary spotlighting a one-man crusade ca...
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“Hellion” Is Merely As Generic As Its Title
One of the few consolations of a beloved television series going off the air is seeing where the members of its cast wind up next. For five white-knuckle seasons, AMC’s Breaking Bad was a prime showcase for Aaron Paul, who, over the course of the series, grew ...
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